Directory UMM :Journals:Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education:Vol6.Num3.1997:

Journal of Information Technology for Teacher
PERCEPTIONS
Education, Vol.
OF 6,
COMPUTER
No.3, 1997 AVAILABILITY

Secondary Teachers’ Perceptions of
Computer Availability: a qualitative study
PAUL ANDREWS
Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT Twenty-seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with
teachers of secondary mathematics from different English schools. This paper
describes their perceptions of computer availability and the impact of those
perceptions on their professional activity. Every represented school had at least
one computer room with the median being two. The number of such rooms
was not necessarily a function of school size. Most teachers indicated that
computer rooms were available less frequently than they would have wished.
The few who expressed satisfaction tended to work in departments with their
own facilities, although frequently these amounted to unreliable machines cast

off by the technology department as newer machines became available. Most
teachers had easy access to single, stand-alone computers although these, too,
tended to be superseded machines which few used. Teachers tended to express
ambivalence in respect of their use of single computers. A speculative rationale
for a more productive deployment of computers in schools is proposed.

Introduction
The last decade has seen undoubted growth in the numbers of computers in
English schools. Indeed, government figures indicating continuous growth
(Table I) compare favourably with those abroad (Pelgrum & Plomp, 1993a).
Despite this there is evidence of insufficient machines for the satisfactory
delivery of all curricular demands. In mathematics, for example, a shortfall
has been noted between pupil-computer ratios and the five-to-one necessary
for the fulfilment of its National Curriculum (MA/ ATM, 1991). Also, despite
what may be described as an encouraging average, individual schools differ
widely in their respective provisions. The ImpacT team, for example, found
pupil-computer ratios ranging from 8:1 to 43:1 in the secondary schools it
investigated (Watson, 1993).
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PAUL ANDREWS

1985

1988

1990

1992

1994

Number of
pupils to one
computer

60

32

18

13

10

Reported in

DES 1986

DES 1989

DES 1991

DfE 1993

DfE 1995a

Table I. The ratio of pupils to one computer in English maintained
secondary schools from 1985 to 1994.

Furthermore, reports continue to be published indicating that teachers
believe there are too few computers for them to be used effectively (CERI,
1989; Zammitt, 1992; Andrews, 1995). The reasons for this are several and
many were well-expressed some time ago. Selwood (1988, p. 3) noted that,
as teachers become aware of subject-specific possibilities, ‘demand for access
to the school’s limited supply of computers’ increases. Such demands have
been exacerbated by computers being placed in laboratories so that
‘teachers of non-computing subjects have in fact been denied access or given
only limited access to the computers’ (CERI, 1989, p. 20). Indeed, as Phillips
(1986) observed, ‘if all the computers are kept in a computer room, if they
are difficult to move, or difficult to book, no one will use them’. Moreover,
the practice of putting machines into specialised rooms encourages special
lessons in IT (Ball, 1987) which further undermined the assimilation of
computers across the curriculum (CERI, 1989). Papert (1994) has argued
that the placing of computers in laboratories was inevitable – a reactionary
institutional response to radical attacks on established educational practices.

The National Curriculum for England and Wales, the statutory curricular
obligations which teachers working in state schools must fulfil, has, in

respect of IT, exacerbated the problem further. IT was presented, initially, as
worthy of study because it can enhance learning and provide pupils with
knowledge and skills for later life (NCC, 1990). Importantly, there was an
explicit acknowledgement that IT can facilitate children’s learning of other
subjects to the extent that its delivery was expected to occur in contexts
where it is an appropriate medium for teaching and learning (DES, 1990).
Thus, for example, children might have been expected to acquire spreadsheet skills within a context in which the mathematics on which they were
working was derived from data yielded by the software. In short, the original
focus placed much of the burden of IT teaching on subject departments and
increased substantially the demand placed on the limited number of
machines in schools. Indeed, whereas in earlier days computers may have
been used by enthusiastic individuals, more recently much larger numbers of
teachers have had to access the same facilities.
Recent changes, due to industrial action instigated as a consequence of
teachers’ perceptions of excessive curricular demands (Robinson, 1995),
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precipitated a shift from notions of IT enhancing children’s learning of other

subjects to a renewed focus on preparing children for later life (SCAA,
1993, 1994). The expectation that subjects should assume some of the
responsibility for the delivery of IT remained with a statement similar to
‘pupils should be given opportunities, where appropriate, to develop and
apply their information technology (IT) capability in their study of mathematics’ (DfE, 1995b, p. 1) appearing at the head of each subject curriculum
document. However, such shifts in emphasis, which raised the status of
vocationally oriented subjects like IT, technology and business studies,
further intensified demand on facilities.
Thus, the evidence indicates that despite a variety of initiatives which
“provided manna from heaven to... enthusiasts whose aim was to fill the
school with microcomputers and associated bits” (Wellington, 1990, p. 58),
demand, in most schools, appears to surpass the limited availability of facilities. The following research describes an interview investigation of secondary mathematics teachers’ perceptions of computer availability and
attempts to explore whether the further passage of time has led to both
improved access to facilities and more propitious conditions for the fulfilment of their curricular requirements.
Method
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-seven teachers of
mathematics from different secondary schools in England from 1992 to
1995. Informants were volunteers following two postal surveys of all
teachers of mathematics in a range of secondary schools chosen at random
from across the Greater Manchester conurbation. The surveys, which were

‘intended to explore aspects of teachers’ attitudes towards, understanding of,
and levels of engagement with, information technology (IT) in respect of the
teaching of mathematics’ (Andrews, 1996, p. 303), and subsequent
interviews were conducted during the academic years 1992/ 93 and
1994/ 95. Full details of the manner in which the sample was identified and
the procedures invoked for the interviews have been described elsewhere
(Andrews, 1996). Each interview, which was tape recorded, lasted around 30
minutes and was transcribed as soon after the interview as was practicable.
Copies of the transcripts were posted to the teachers concerned in order to
confirm their accuracy. No informant challenged the content of his or her
transcript.

Content analysis was achieved through a process of reading and re-reading
until it was clear that categories were emerging (Saran, 1985; Nias, 1991).
In reality this meant that each transcript was read twice to gain a sense of a
teacher’s perspectives and to facilitate the identification of common themes.
Each transcript was then coded according to the following mechanism. Each
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theme was allotted a colour and any reference to it was marked accordingly
in the margin. Frequently themes overlapped or teachers alluded to several
simultaneously. In such cases several colours would have been used. On
completion all references to a given theme were copied from each transcript
and pasted into a new file dedicated to that theme. This was done in such a
way as to maintain the integrity of sources. Each of the dedicated files was
read repeatedly in order to gain a sense as to how informants, in general, had
spoken on that particular theme. Several areas of common interest or
concern were revealed. This paper focuses on teachers’ perceptions of
computer availability and how it impacts on their exploitation of IT in the
teaching of mathematics.
Results
All interviewees commented in some detail on the availability of the
computer facilities within their schools. Comments ranged from details
about computer laboratories and the types and number of machines within
them to the availability of single computers within classrooms. Throughout
the following account are references to BBCs – 8 bit, 32k machines made by
Acorn Computers in the UK – which were purchased by many British
schools throughout the 1980s. Their ubiquity was a consequence of a

government ‘home grown’ only policy for schools’ computer purchases
(Hawkridge, 1987).
Provision of Computer Suites

Informants confirmed the existence of at least one computer suite in each
represented school, although there was considerable variation in the
provisions described. Few teachers spoke of the numbers of machines in
their computer rooms although those that did indicated that there were
rarely less than 15 machines with the norm appearing to be around the low
twenties.

The following is premised on a notion that discussions based on absolute
numbers would be pointless because such figures, when removed from their
respective contexts, become meaningless. A more meaningful figure, which
facilitates comparison, was thought to be the pupil to computer-room ratio.
Full details can be seen in Table II.
The most favourable ratio was 164 in a school of 850 pupils which had
recently acquired ‘technology college’ status. This particular school, as a
consequence of a competitive bidding process aimed at breaking the
perception of underachievement frequently associated with inner city

schools, had attracted, direct from central government, substantial additional
technology funding. The least favourable ratio was 1250 pupils in a mixed

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comprehensive to one computer room containing sufficient BBC machines
for a class of ‘children to work three to a computer’. The median was 440
and the mean 499.
Number of
pupils in
school

Computer Pupils:1
rooms
computer
room

450

1

450

660

1

660

670

1

670

1250

1

1250

780

1.5

520

970

1.5

647

1180

1.5

787

610

2

305

630

2

315

720

2

360

880

2

440

900

2

450

920

2

460

1230

2

615

1500

2

750

920

2.5

368

1100

3

367

1130

3

377

1500

3

500

1250

4

313

1360

4

340

1480

4

370

820

5

164

Table II. Overview of IT in each
of the schools surveyed.

Access to Computer Suites

Five teachers spoke of their departments having its own computer suite.
Two of these worked in schools which had been awarded technology college
funding and described enviable facilities. The others spoke of their acquiring

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sets of redundant, in respect of IT, machines. One commented that “it’s been
a problem of access to them until recently, but we have got better access
now, because there’s a new computer suite in the school and we’ve inherited
the old one. There are maths lessons going on in the old computer room all
the time, so we’ve got a suite of BBC computers that we can use.” Another
was less sanguine and suggested that they had acquired “... second-hand,
passed down machines, BBC machines ... which are now very, very
unreliable. They were unreliable when we had them but now they’re even
worse and it’s a very frustrating process when the software doesn’t load
properly. The children get annoyed and so on.”

Access to such rooms was not felt to be a problem and generally involved
little more than a negotiated room change with the incumbent. The least
favourable scenario was when
... there’s a class in there but it’s one of the maths department
teachers and so it’s a maths class so that it would be reasonably
easy. I think it would be polite to give twenty-four hours notice,
at reasonably short notice you could swap.
Two thirds of the remaining interviewees described poor access to computer
rooms. A deputy head and former head of mathematics commented that:
“The position with access is difficult in that we have two computer rooms in
school and every child has a double of IT per week, which therefore makes
the spare capacity on the rooms difficult.” Another suggested that, despite
his school having three rooms equipped with relatively up-to-date personal
computers, he would be unable to book one “... because they’re booked up
all the time with IT ... years seven and eight also go in English as well and
they learn how to use word-processors.”

Five teachers indicated reasonable expectations of gaining access to
computer suites in the sense that they “could book a time and ... take them in
to teach spreadsheets or logo”. One commented that access appeared
unchanged by increasing numbers of computers: “there’s more IT taught,
there’s more keyboarding taught, and therefore the availability’s about the
same. So they’re used more on a regular basis by other teachers. They are
fairly available as long as you book them in advance. If you’re teaching a
class four periods a week you can usually get three of those four. So you can
have continuation of teaching.”
Two teachers claimed better than adequate access to computer rooms. One,
who worked in a school with a successful, income generating brass band,
commented that as computers were superseded, the mathematics department
was able to avail itself of the newly unwanted ones. She acknowledged,
also, her school’s unusual position, “money isn’t a problem, we can
basically say, ‘Can we have some more computers?’ and we’d probably get
them at some stage.” The second commented that mathematics and

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technology were housed in a building separated from the remainder of the
school by a substantial open air walk; there was a computer room in both
buildings and most staff tended not to leave their particular area. Of the
computer room in her block containing BBC machines, she said, “it’s a
whole-school facility but it’s in this building. In this building you’ve got
three maths rooms and the technology department ... You have to book it but
it’s not, I mean, it’s not overly used. You don’t have any problems.”
Teachers’ comments seemed indicative of poorer access to computer suites
than most would have wished. A few taught in well-equipped schools but
most did not. Indeed, one mentioned that her school’s computer room
contained personal computers with 186 processors which were unable to run
the sort of software her department wished to use. Several teachers spoke of
the significance of managerial decisions in respect of computer purchase
and deployment. One described his school’s leasing agreement which
allowed for the replacement of superseded machines. Another commented
that his school’s decision to stay with a particular manufacturer had necessitated regular and expensive upgrading and that he foresaw a time, within the
near future, when they would all need replacing at prohibitive cost. Another
spoke of her headteacher’s inability to cope with technological arguments:
One of the problems that we also have is that the Head is not really au
fait with IT. He thinks if you’ve got six BBCs in one room, six
Archimedes in another and you fetch three Apple Macs in then it’s OK,
you’ve got enough for a class. He doesn’t understand the differences
between the systems. He thinks you can just link them all up together
and it doesn’t matter that they’re different.

Others spoke of other difficulties. One teacher commented that the “physical
side of ... having to trail the class down to the computer room” was enough
to prevent his bothering. Another noted that using the computer room “...
takes a bit of setting up, because none of them have got hard disks so it’s a
matter of me going round and banging it in, loading it, going to the next
one, banging it in, loading it.”
Access to Single Computers

Several teachers commented on the provision of single, or stand-alone,
computers in their schools although many saw little value in their using
them. This concern was typified by one teacher who commented that “I
really think that one computer in the classroom is virtually useless. I think if
the kids are going to get anything from it they’ve got to get some hands on
experience.” Frequently, it seemed, single computers were redundant
machines cast out by the technology department. One teacher, who taught
both mathematics and IT commented that “we’ve not done away with [older
computers] but we’ve farmed out BBCs to other areas”. Another, despite his
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acknowledging the range of machines available to him, said that “we get all
the rubbish that nobody else wants that the kids have wrecked. It’s terrible.”

The numbers of such machines varied widely. Several spoke of their departments possessing just one or two BBCs on trolleys. One, with poor access to
her school’s two computer rooms, outlined the logistics of getting the
machine to her room:
The maths department has one computer, but it’s locked away
somewhere. ... J. (head of department) said I could have it as long as I
took it backwards and forwards every day. But the store room’s just
miles away ... You go out of the classroom, which means going down the
steps, it’s on a trolley as well, and you have to walk across the
playground and in the far door there, and then down the corridor and
then you turn right through some double doors and then down some
stairs ... It is impractical, basically, because of all the stairways and the
fact that I have to go outside and at the end of each day I’ve got no
security in this building really so it would mean I’d have to take it back
every day.

Security was an issue raised more than once. A typical comment was that
“there is no way that we can have computers in our maths rooms because
we cannot secure the school premises to enable us to do that.”

At the other extreme a few teachers spoke of an abundance of such
machines. One commented that: “We’ve got a hundred, no, loads of BBCs
floating around that we sometimes set up in clusters. The technology department uses those for control. We used to have a cluster of six just outside and
anybody could go and work on those outside, and that was quite good. But
then we grew out of BBCs.” Several spoke of there being a single computer
in each mathematics classroom. The reactions to such provisions were
mixed. One commented that: “I’ve got a Nimbus [similar to a PC] at the
back of the room that I’ve used with two first year classes for a database.
They’ve put information in and then we’ve looked at it as a class. But it’s
very limited what you can get out of it doing it like that. You can get some
points out but they don’t get any real hands on experience and so it’s a waste
of time.” A few schools had attempted to alleviate problems of access by
networking the school and providing single machines in each classroom. “So
what we’ve done is we’ve networked the school ... in maths we have ... BBC
computers which we can plug in and use”.
Of the 16 teachers who commented on single computer availability, 12
described the machines as BBCs which lends support to the notion of their
being cast-offs from technology. Frequently these appeared incompatible
with the machines used in IT. One said of the stand-alone computer to which
he had access, “it’s a BBC, not an Arc. The kids are used to using the Arcs
for the spreadsheets”.
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Discussion
There were computer rooms in every school, which accords with earlier
studies (Wellington, 1987; Zammitt, 1992; Owen, 1992), although levels of
access were variable (Byard, 1995). This was not unexpected as schools’
budgets are commensurate with the number of pupils on roll. In many
schools computer rooms designated as whole-school facilities tended to
contain relatively modern machines running sophisticated graphical user
interfaces (GUIs). In general these were PCs or Apple Macintoshes. However,
this was not always the case – a few informants reported that their schools
only had old BBC machines or very early PCs with, say, 186 processors.
Some schools had computer rooms designated to mathematics departments
which required teachers to negotiate room changes. However, frequently
such rooms were a consequence of old and unreliable machines being
passed down from IT. It is of interest that the apparent prevalence of old
machines accords with other recent surveys. Goldstein (1997), summarising
the findings of schools’ inspectors, noted that IT equipment was “poor in
about one third of (secondary) schools” (p. 11) whilst Stevenson’s (1997)
independent inquiry found that “much of the hardware in schools is
technologically behind the times” (Summary, point 1).

Some schools had bookable computer rooms whilst others had not. In some
schools IT and other subjects seemed to have a monopoly on facilities. The
degree to which teachers claimed access to computer rooms did not appear
to be influenced by the numbers of computer rooms in their schools. The
generality seemed that schools with the greatest number of computer rooms
were those that had gained external funding. In general, informants spoke of
poorer access to computer rooms than they would have wished. This
conflicts with Oliver’s (1994) belief that “equipment levels within schools
are rising to the point where access is no longer an issue” (p. 140) but
accords with other studies (Zammitt, 1992; Blackmore, 1992; Downes,
1993; Williams & Moss, 1993) although the latter comment that such
perceptions may be a consequence of “an inherent tendency for staff ... to
believe that things are better elsewhere” (p. 83). It is of interest that several
teachers alluded to a belief that problems of access are not always a consequence of disparate funding but may be more concerned with managerial
inadequacies – a continuing problem noted by school inspectors (Goldstein,
1997).
An interesting perception was that those teachers who claimed access to
computer facilities seemed to be those who had tried to gain it. This
accorded with the ImpacT study (Watson, 1993) which found that “it was
the keen IT user who managed, in spite of the many difficulties encountered,
to obtain access to IT resources, whilst others accepted the status quo”
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PAUL ANDREWS

(p. 16). Alternatively, teachers who claimed little or no access seemed to be
the ones who had never seriously tried to gain it. This was supported by the
comments of one teacher who claimed no bookable access to any of his
school’s three computer rooms whilst simultaneously suggesting that he was
too busy to explore the possibilities and was grateful for the technology
department’s delivering the IT curriculum. The evidence here lends some
support to a finding of Zammitt (1992) and Brummelhuis & Plomp (1993)
that teachers frequently use perceptions of poor access as an excuse for not
trying.
Also, in accord with the finding of Pelgrum & Schipper (1993) and irrespective of the quality of provision, there were teachers unsure as to why the
teaching of mathematics should entail the use of computer rooms. One
explanation might be that the curricular integration of computers in their
respective schools was less complete than in others. The Comped study
found, for example, that ‘the degree of integration of computers seems to
covary with the emphasis put on educational reasons for introducing
computers’ (Pelgrum & Schipper, 1993, p. 146).
The disparity between the ratio of pupils to computer rooms of different
schools identified seemed greater than those reported elsewhere (Williams
& Moss, 1993; Yeomans et al, 1995). The worst ratio of more than 1200
brought into question that school’s ability to deliver the English National
Curriculum. In such schools few teachers could exploit computers for
anything other than perfunctory experiences. It is conjectured that such a
provision may have a more lasting negative effect than would a provision of
zero computers. Irregular and cursory computer use may precipitate the
dissatisfaction and negative attitudes likely to dissuade teachers from further
use. Zero availability, though likely to foster frustration, would be unlikely
to contribute to negative attitudes and poor pedagogic practices. The best
ratio was below 200 and a consequence of a successful bid for additional
technology funds. However, despite the propitious circumstances the mathematics teacher interviewed seemed uncertain, beyond the use of a sophisticated tutorial package, how best the facilities might be used. Such situations,
whereby the arrival of computers was faster than the rate by which teachers
could assimilate them meaningfully into their work, were observed some
years ago (Stasz & Shavelson, 1985) and appear no better resolved ten years
later.
A few teachers spoke with enthusiasm about the use of single computers in
their room, although, in general, such facilities were viewed with
scepticism. Few had difficulty in obtaining one but most saw little point in
so doing. It was inferred, due to complaints that such machines were old and
incompatible with machines elsewhere in the school, that such computers
tended to be BBCs. Such scepticism accords with the findings of Yeomans
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et al (1995) that by the mid 1980s “the country’s ubiquitous BBC computer
with its Basic language, was at best irrelevant and at worst counterproductive.” (p. 330).
Most frequently single computers were used as part of a carousel of activities which some teachers viewed positively and others not. Underpinning
many responses seemed to be a belief that successful computer use necessitated children’s operating the keyboard. This perception was supported by
those who complained that, with single machines in a classroom, children
receive inadequate hands-on experience. There was little sense, for example,
that teachers were aware that a single computer could provide a focus for a
whole class discussion, with its concomitant redefinition of classroom
relationships and pedagogies, as described optimistically some years ago by
Phillips (1986) and Dunn (1986). It is possible, as a consequence of
National Curriculum and school policy ambiguities, that many teachers,
uncertain as to the purpose of computer use, perceive their role as supporting children’s acquisition of IT skills rather than using computers to enhance
mathematics. Such ambiguities are not uncommon: “one problem often
associated with program guidelines is that they suffer from vagueness, often
reflecting compromises between parties involved” (Pelgrum & Plomp,
1993b, p. 324). Also, when objectives for an innovation lack clarity they
may result in piecemeal implementation and anxiety and frustration for
those responsible for its management (Fullan & Stiegelbauer, 1991).
There may be other reasons for teachers’ reactions to BBC machines. The
evidence above suggests that older machines are perceived as technically
demanding which accords with the comments of Anderson & Collis (1993)
that computers of the early 1980s were such that ‘one often had to write a
program in Basic, Fortran or Pascal to accomplish a computer related task’.
When the power is switched on the only outcome is a blank screen with a
Basic prompt. The only options are to program in Basic or load a program
from a floppy disk. Frequently teachers experience problems with machines
not doing what is expected of them. Printing from them is perceived as difficult. In such contexts teachers may be dissuaded by the expectation of their
having to make technical rather than pedagogic interventions. Other
teachers, for a variety of reasons, may have become familiar with machines
with sophisticated graphical user interfaces. They may be competent users
of software which requires little more than the skill of pointing and clicking
a mouse and expect no difficulties in printing or saving their work. Such
people may be reluctant to engage with machines which require skills
outside their repertoire. Alternatively, a teacher experienced with BBC
machines and the booting of simple programs from a floppy disk, might balk
at the use of more sophisticated software and its mass of tools and menus.

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Whether the above reflects the true state of computer provision in schools is
not necessarily the important issue. Teachers believe they have inadequate
access to resources. This is a problem because “if teachers do not believe
that facilities are available or they feel that they are being obstructed in their
desire to gain access ... then they will not be used’ (Andrews, 1995, p. 96).
Further, the machines to which many teachers have access are old and, in
respect of the expectations laid upon them, inappropriate (Stevenson, 1997).
Implications
There are implications for school managers. The evidence of this study
indicates that most computer rooms have insufficient machines for all
children to work alone and that paired working, planned or otherwise,
seems to be the norm. The evidence also suggests that any benefits pupils
gain from such working is more likely to be coincidental than planned
(Eraut & Hoyles, 1989). Consequently, and in the light of substantial
evidence indicating that children who work at computers in groups benefit,
both intellectually and socially, in many ways (Cox & Berger, 1985; Johnson
et al, 1985; Guntermann & Tovar, 1987; Rysavy & Sales, 1991; Mevarech et
al, 1991; Sutton, 1991; Hoyles et al, 1991; Hooper, 1992a, 1992b; Hoyles et
al, 1994; Jackson & Kutnick, 1996). It is conjectured that any computer
room in which there are sufficient machines for children to work alone
contains too many computers. Those schools may be better served by
placing sufficient machines in each computer suite to force groupwork. In
most circumstances this would mean no more than 15 computers in any one
room. Schools in which computer rooms have more than 15 machines might
be better served by considering ways in which the excess might be
redeployed.

The interviews suggested that many teachers are sceptical of the value of
single computers in their classrooms. They tended to use them as part of a
carousel of activities, with little sense of their being part of a coherently
structured learning experience. Frequently they were used as a reward which
emphasised rather than ameliorated the differences between children – a use
criticised by English school inspectors (Goldstein, 1995). Also, such use
encourages teachers to neglect the pedagogic decisions necessary for
software to be deployed effectively (Katterns & Haigh, 1986). It is
suggested that such machines form the basis of additional computer rooms.
It is acknowledged that many of these machines are likely to be the BBCs
which many informants described as inadequate, although it is conjectured
that such a computer room is likely to be more useful than 15 machines
distributed around a school. In this way it is not inconceivable that schools
currently with two computer rooms and a bevy of stand-alones might equip
four.
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The evidence indicates that many of the issues addressed in earlier research
have not been resolved. Many teachers remain ambivalent, possibly phobic,
towards computers and that this is a significant source of inertia (Somekh &
Davies, 1991). The computer remains an innovation and is perceived to
de-skill people and create incompetence (Heywood & Norman, 1988).
Somekh (1992) notes, in particular, that “... new technology constitutes an
attack upon the self-image and professional values of some individuals,
because ... computers may suggest an inhuman influence in the classroom
and seem to promote pupil isolation” (p. 157).
It is suggested, therefore, that managers consider arranging their computer
rooms in ways which allow teachers to address the whole class simultaneously whilst seeing their pupils’ faces. In most computer rooms teachers are
forced to speak to a sea of backs (pupils and/or computer monitors) which
creates unwanted and unnecessary challenges to established and successful
classroom management skills.
There are other pedagogic considerations. Teachers, aware that computers
should enhance, and not dictate, the manner in which teaching and learning
take place, may wish to work in ways which encourage pupils to see
computers as tools which support learning and not as ends in themselves.
Such a perspective appears at odds with the English National Curriculum
expectations described above. Teachers may wish their children to work in
pairs or on their own. They may prefer their pupils to work on different
tasks. They may want them to change activities half-way through a lesson.
The possibilities are many. Such diversity, however, necessitates a review of
the layout of the computer room. Space needs to be created for learners to
work, in conventional pen and paper manner, away from the computers
themselves. Such approaches, despite being grounded in the experiences of
teachers of mathematics are believed to be valid for teachers of other
subjects. Teachers of English, for example, may wish to discuss with a
whole class an essay which is to be written. The outline plan of the essay is
constructed away from the computer but the draft is then written on a wordprocessor, printed and then edited away from the machine.
There are implications for teacher education and, in particular, initial
teacher training. Most British secondary teachers enter the profession having
followed a one year post graduate certificate in education course (PGCE).
Such courses, since 1994 (DfE, 1992), comprise twenty-four weeks schoolbased and just twelve weeks college-based training. The evidence of this
study suggests that relatively few teachers of mathematics are likely to have
the access to computers, and importantly, the skills and expertise necessary
for them to act as mentors to initial teacher trainees. Consequently, schoolbased experiences are unlikely to lead to the fulfilment of the Teacher Training Agency’s (TTA, 1997) requirements in respect of beginning teachers’ IT
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competence. Such concerns are not new (Monaghan, 1993; Andrews, 1995,
1997) but appear unlikely to be resolved within the context of school-based
experiences. Those responsible for the design and implementation of initial
teacher training courses may have to consider ways of using the limited time
in college to re-mediate this situation.
In summary, the findings of this small scale study indicate that teachers of
mathematics claim poorer access to computers than curriculum documents
might have expected although there is evidence that such claims may mask
other problems – not least the ageing population of machines to which most
appear to have access. Computer rooms with modern machines appear less
readily available than old stand-alone machines although there is some
evidence that those who seek access are usually successful in gaining it.
Many teachers are sceptical of single computers and uncertain as to how
they might be used effectively. A way forward, in which computers might be
deployed more productively, has been proposed.
Correspondence

Paul Andrews, Department of Sciences Education, Manchester Metropolitan
University, 799 Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, Manchester M20 2RR, United
Kingdom (p.andrews@mmu.ac.uk).

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